Elephant House Still Open
May 31st, 2008 by 
Kevin
Well….we’re still here.
Today kicked off with songs, lots of patriotic songs. An interesting start to the day. I’m wondering if they were trying to sooth away the rough edges from yesterday.
Today started off with a speech by Pawlenty and as usual his speech was an excellent one, and hopefully started us off on the right foot.
So far it’s just been speeches. Reports from party officers. Dorothy Fleming, in her speech, remarked how the Republicans Party is not the party for “Al Gore wannabes”. I’m not sure if that was a poke at McCain or Coleman or both. Both have revealed their “I wanna be like Gore” stripes in the last few days…much to the disgust of many.
Hopefully today is a calm boring day….but I’m not optimistic. I’ve talked to many delegates who are expecting some of the delegates to try to revoke Pawlenty’s credentials as national delegate again. Reason for this is he never met with the nominating committee as the rules dictate he had to….and which all other candidates had to.
UPDATES :
10:22 - Basically it looks like we’re just doing speeches today….Brian Davis is an AWESOME speaker. He went on about how he rejects Cap-And-Trade and the “global warming religion”. The ENTIRE delegation stood up and applaud. Why Coleman thinks it’s a good idea to support the upcoming Warner-Lieberman “I love Al Gore” bill is beyond me.
10:36 - We took a break from speeches to hear the results on platform resolutions voting yesterday. Basically everything passed with two exceptions…
Item #13 failed to such a large degree that according to the rules it is not subject to further debate. It deleted the following from the platform:
That the lawful definition of a “Human Being” shall be : ‘When the DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid) of Mankind is joined’
Item #49 also failed to reach the 70% margin, but barely….it didn’t pass by 0.1% (actually failed by one vote reportedly). But according to our rules, it can be debated. It was briefly debated and then voted on again. It passed. This item reads as follows :
Ending United State participation in the United Nations
Debate was barely necessary as it then passed overwhelmingly.
10:44 - Battery getting low….time to charge.
10:50 - Nevermind, the fine folks at 1280 AM - The Patriot allowing me use of one of their plugins and are letting me just hibernate in their corner of the convention. Yeah for electrons!
10:57 - Barb Davis just spoke….excellent speaker! Her personality and energy always comes across in her speeches. Definitely perked the crowd up.
11:00 - Oh by the way, for those that didn’t know….Karl Rove is our keynote speaker today…due to speak in about one hour.
11:09 - Ron Carey is proposing a potential new agenda for the Republican Party, as he terms it a “Common Sense Agenda”. For the most part it is a fairly good one, and is being well received.
11:10 - Ron Carey is giving out Volunteer of the Year awards.
11:26 - Marty Seifert is here in The Patriot area now….presumably to be on air soon. It’s fun watching Chad and Brian talk on air. Alot of the usual conversational stuff (hand gestures, etc) happens but never makes it on air….slightly amusing.
12:30 - I wasn’t posting because there was a lot of parlimentary shenanigans going on that I wanted to pay attention to. There was an effort to adjourn to head off any attempts to revoke Pawlenty’s national delegate credentials.
It failed….so we had the battle on the floor. And it was quite “interesting”. Ultimately an exemption was granted to Pawlenty. However, in the midst of it a particularly statement was made on the floor that argued for the exemption, both Ron Carey and Tony Sutton stood up from their seats at the front of the room and vigorously applauded. Absolutely classless act by both of them.
Then another attempt to adjourn was made to head off any further shenanigans. It passed and we are now officially adjourned.
Karl Rove is speaking….he’s good….
….lots of red meat for the base. Karl Rove knows all the key points and he hits every single one.
After this is the State Central Committee Meeting….I may pick up this liveblog again there.
4:30 - Eh, nevermind….nothing much happened during the State Central Committee meeting. The Bylaws were changed to make it more difficult to call an unscheduled State Central Committee meeting. And the results of the FEC audit were released. Let’s just say the Executive Committee was unreasonably sensitive about anyone asking questions about the results. But basically the end results were that there were a couple bookkeeping errors, mostly because the FEC rules are f-ing impossible to comprehend.
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Posted in 2008 MN GOP Convention | 
May 31st, 2008 at 5:08 pm
So, I was there also at the Convention. I was in 39A and a delegate.
I am a Ron Paul supporter and I was wondering if you like McCain or not. It seems like you don’t.
My other question was did you agree with the ruling of the exemption of Tim Pawlenty. I left beforehand, unfortunately. My mom and uncle wanted to get going.
All in all, it was invigorating!
May 31st, 2008 at 9:40 pm
“But basically the end results were that there were a couple bookkeeping errors, mostly because the FEC rules are f-ing impossible to comprehend.”
And we have two men to thank for that….Russ Feingold and JOHN MCCAIN!!!!!
LL
May 31st, 2008 at 9:47 pm
Had I known you were there I would have looked for you.
Yes I am NOT a McCain supporter, but at the same time, I am most assuredly not a Ron Paul supporter.
I did not agree that the party give him a pre-emptive exemption from the rules. That’s just wrong. If we have rules and they are non-negotiable, then they apply to everyone.
At the same time if the body wants to grant exemptions to certain people, I’m okay with that. But it should have been done in advance, not after the fact.
In general, I disagree with Ronulans on quite a few big issues and find the behavior of many to be very annoying. However, I still felt Ron Paul supporters got dealt a raw deal at the convention
May 31st, 2008 at 9:56 pm
LL,
I agree….we have a lot to thank McCain for….very little of it is good.
May 31st, 2008 at 9:58 pm
Coleman is supporting Cap and Trade because he’s trying to establish himself as a centrist - and some of his campaign commercials connect him to Amy Klobuchar. He promotes the idea he can “get things done”. After all, where is the base going to go - to Al Franken?
June 1st, 2008 at 10:36 am
I’ve never bought the argument that there is “not a dime’s worth of difference” between Coleman and Franken. The gap is huge by almost any measure. Yet, when it comes to what may be the most far-reaching and stupidest bill of the year, he chooses to vote just like Al Franken would…
June 1st, 2008 at 10:41 am
As for the convention, I thought the Ron Paul people reaped what they sowed, and that’s never pretty. They were the ones trying to exploit the rules– written and unwritten– for their own advantage. When the unwritten rules were written down to restore fairness to the process, they objected. That this sudden but relatively slight change to the rules was handled badly I agree, but that’s what happens when you smoke in the Porta-potty.
June 1st, 2008 at 12:34 pm
The biggest issue I had at the convention was with the ballots for national and alternates to the national convention. I think it is accurate to say that a high percentage of the seated delegates were unaware the nominating committee was going to “cherry pick” which people would be on the ballot. This was compounded by the fact that the previous rules adopted prevented even writing in names. Had people known that the candidates would be filtered, that rule would of been heavily contested.
This resulted in the Ron Paul slate only having 3 out of their 28 candidates on the ballot.
What we were left with is Iranian style democracy. In Iran, their supreme council only puts candidates on the ballot they approve of and they try to pass that off as democracy.
There were people from SD 37 such as Peter Zidek and Russel Mull who wanted to run for those positions as well. There is no reason we shouldn’t of been able to vote for those fine men.
Overall, I am terribly disappointed with the leadership of Ron Carey. He has acted in a very impartial, divisive fashion throughout this primary season. A lot of people now know how this game is played after experiencing the convention and I wouldn’t be surprised if Carey was not re-elected in 2009.
June 1st, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Kevin - What district were you in?
J. Ewing - Just curious, do you have specific rules you are referring too.
June 16th, 2008 at 1:22 am
[...] in it. Subsequent to that conversation, the delegation at the MN GOP state convention, passed a resolution stating Ending United State participation in the United [...]